Sportradar to feature at European Handball TalksHomeSportradar to feature at European Handball Talks

Sportradar to feature at European Handball Talks

May 24, 2018

EHF Marketing – the subsidiary of the European Handball Federation – is to host HackDays on Thursday and Friday this week as part of the European Handball Talks, with Sportradar supplying its market-leading data.

The HackDays will begin on Thursday evening and run until Friday afternoon, seeing participants use data from the EHF’s official data and streaming partner Sportradar to compete across three areas of fan engagement/experience, marketing and livestreaming.

The results from the hackathon will be revealed during the European Handball Talks on Friday – an event that sees expert speakers from across various industries take to the stage, including Sportradar’s Director of Digital Platforms, Nikolaus Beier, who will discuss strategies and technologies of digital monetisation.

To find out more, Sportradar caught up with EHF Marketing’s Head of Business Development, Henry M. Blunck.

Image via www.ehfcl.com

Henry, please explain to us a little bit more about the European Handball Talks in Cologne.

The European Handball Talks is both the opening and business event of the VELUX EHF FINAL4 – the final tournament of the VELUX EHF Champions League.

Over the last weekend in May, the EHF and its marketing arm not only gather the handball community in Cologne, but also experts from the world of media, marketing and sports. At the European Handball Talks we then bring them all together to discuss the relevant topics of handball and sports in general.

And where do the European Handball HackDays fit in?

In last year’s showcase, European Handball Goes Tech, we invited our community to become an active part of the development and innovations in European Handball. Taking that as the starting point, a hackathon is the logical next step for us – fostering the development of digital and technological ideas together with our community.

What do you hope to see from teams competing at the HackDays?

Most important is creativity and thinking outside the box. But this year we also have many applications from active handball players, so the merge of tech-minded people and actual athletes is something that we are really looking forward to.

How has Sportradar’s extensive range of live data, statistics and integrity services improved the EHF’s product?

We started the cooperation with Sportradar at the beginning of the 2017-18 season and have already seen several improvements. The most important of these is quality management and the supervision of match data collection in this regard. Implementing a new system in a decentralised environment like European handball involves a big change to the management process but we have now reached a point where we really see the positive impact of the partnership.

How has ehfTV.com benefited from Sportradar’s OTT offering?

Actually, we were already a long-term partner of LAOLA1 before they merged with Sportradar and we were always satisfied with the service and products. But yes, this additional part of our partnership has certainly brought additional value to our OTT platform and we are looking forward to seeing some of the new releases in the near future.